IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v33y2024i5p929-951.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Should it stay, or swerve? Trading off lives in dilemma situations involving autonomous cars

Author

Listed:
  • Wolfgang Habla
  • Mitesh Kataria
  • Peter Martinsson
  • Kerstin Roeder

Abstract

Using a representative survey with 1317 individuals and 12,815 moral decisions, we elicit Swedish citizens' preferences on how algorithms for self‐driving cars should be programmed in cases of unavoidable harm to humans. Participants' choices in different dilemma situations (treatments) show that, at the margin, the average respondent values the lives of passengers and pedestrians equally when both groups are homogeneous and no group is to blame for the dilemma. In comparison, the respondent values the lives of passengers more when the pedestrians violate a social norm, and less when the pedestrians are children. Furthermore, we explain why the average respondent in the control treatment needs to be compensated with two to six passengers spared in order to sacrifice the first pedestrian, even though she values the lives of passengers and pedestrians equally at the margin. We conclude that respondents' choices are highly contextual and consider the age of the persons involved and whether these persons have complied with social norms.

Suggested Citation

  • Wolfgang Habla & Mitesh Kataria & Peter Martinsson & Kerstin Roeder, 2024. "Should it stay, or swerve? Trading off lives in dilemma situations involving autonomous cars," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 929-951, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:33:y:2024:i:5:p:929-951
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.4802
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4802
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/hec.4802?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Martinsson, Peter, 2008. "Are some lives more valuable? An ethical preferences approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 739-752, May.
    2. Dolan, Paul & Tsuchiya, Aki, 2009. "The social welfare function and individual responsibility: Some theoretical issues and empirical evidence," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 210-220, January.
    3. repec:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2016.303628_6 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Dolan, Paul & Tsuchiya, Aki, 2005. "Health priorities and public preferences: the relative importance of past health experience and future health prospects," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 703-714, July.
    5. Judith Covey & Angela Robinson & Michael Jones-Lee & Graham Loomes, 2010. "Responsibility, scale and the valuation of rail safety," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 85-108, February.
    6. Train,Kenneth E., 2009. "Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521766555, November.
    7. Samuelson, William & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 7-59, March.
    8. Edmond Awad & Sohan Dsouza & Richard Kim & Jonathan Schulz & Joseph Henrich & Azim Shariff & Jean-François Bonnefon & Iyad Rahwan, 2018. "The Moral Machine experiment," Nature, Nature, vol. 563(7729), pages 59-64, November.
    9. Gregory L. Poe & Kelly L. Giraud & John B. Loomis, 2005. "Computational Methods for Measuring the Difference of Empirical Distributions," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(2), pages 353-365.
    10. Gu, Yuanyuan & Lancsar, Emily & Ghijben, Peter & Butler, James RG & Donaldson, Cam, 2015. "Attributes and weights in health care priority setting: A systematic review of what counts and to what extent," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 41-52.
    11. Sandra Baez & Daniel Flichtentrei & María Prats & Ricardo Mastandueno & Adolfo M García & Marcelo Cetkovich & Agustín Ibáñez, 2017. "Men, women…who cares? A population-based study on sex differences and gender roles in empathy and moral cognition," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-21, June.
    12. Cropper, Maureen L & Aydede, Sema K & Portney, Paul R, 1994. "Preferences for Life Saving Programs: How the Public Discounts Time and Age," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 243-265, May.
    13. Fleetwood, J., 2017. "Public health, ethics, and autonomous vehicles," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 107(4), pages 532-537.
    14. Richard Edlin & Aki Tsuchiya & Paul Dolan, 2012. "Public Preferences For Responsibility Versus Public Preferences For Reducing Inequalities," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(12), pages 1416-1426, December.
    15. Zamir, Eyal & Medina, Barak, 2010. "Law, Economics, and Morality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195372168.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gu, Yuanyuan & Lancsar, Emily & Ghijben, Peter & Butler, James RG & Donaldson, Cam, 2015. "Attributes and weights in health care priority setting: A systematic review of what counts and to what extent," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 41-52.
    2. Kevin J. Boyle & Mark Morrison & Darla Hatton MacDonald & Roderick Duncan & John Rose, 2016. "Investigating Internet and Mail Implementation of Stated-Preference Surveys While Controlling for Differences in Sample Frames," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 64(3), pages 401-419, July.
    3. Denburg, Avram E. & Ungar, Wendy J. & Chen, Shiyi & Hurley, Jeremiah & Abelson, Julia, 2020. "Does moral reasoning influence public values for health care priority setting?: A population-based randomized stated preference survey," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(6), pages 647-658.
    4. Helen Scarborough & Jeff Bennett, 2012. "Cost–Benefit Analysis and Distributional Preferences," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14376, March.
    5. Olof Johansson‐Stenman & Minhaj Mahmud & Peter Martinsson, 2011. "Saving lives versus life‐years in rural Bangladesh: an ethical preferences approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(6), pages 723-736, June.
    6. Mouter, Niek & van Cranenburgh, Sander & van Wee, Bert, 2017. "Do individuals have different preferences as consumer and citizen? The trade-off between travel time and safety," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 333-349.
    7. Mouter, Niek & Cabral, Manuel Ojeda & Dekker, Thijs & van Cranenburgh, Sander, 2019. "The value of travel time, noise pollution, recreation and biodiversity: A social choice valuation perspective," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    8. Oehlmann, Malte & Meyerhoff, Jürgen & Mariel, Petr & Weller, Priska, 2017. "Uncovering context-induced status quo effects in choice experiments," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 59-73.
    9. Simon McNamara & John Holmes & Abigail K. Stevely & Aki Tsuchiya, 2020. "How averse are the UK general public to inequalities in health between socioeconomic groups? A systematic review," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(2), pages 275-285, March.
    10. Lancsar, Emily & Wildman, John & Donaldson, Cam & Ryan, Mandy & Baker, Rachel, 2011. "Deriving distributional weights for QALYs through discrete choice experiments," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 466-478, March.
    11. Ortega, David L. & Wang, H. Holly & Wu, Laping & Hong, Soo Jeong, 2015. "Retail channel and consumer demand for food quality in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 359-366.
    12. Mtimet, Nadhem & Ujiie, Kiyokazu & Kashiwagi, Kenichi & Zaibet, Lokman & Nagaki, Masakazu, 2011. "The effects of Information and Country of Origin on Japanese Olive Oil Consumer Selection," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114642, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    13. Robson, Matthew & O’Donnell, Owen & Van Ourti, Tom, 2024. "Aversion to health inequality — Pure, income-related and income-caused," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    14. Illichmann, R. & Abdulai, A., 2014. "Analysis of Consumer Preferences and Wilingness-To-Pay for Organic Food Products in Germany," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 49, March.
    15. Dugstad, Anders & Grimsrud, Kristine & Kipperberg, Gorm & Lindhjem, Henrik & Navrud, Ståle, 2020. "Acceptance of wind power development and exposure – Not-in-anybody's-backyard," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    16. Buchmueller, Thomas, 2006. "Price and the health plan choices of retirees," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 81-101, January.
    17. Nguyen, Thanh Cong & Le, Hoa Thu & Nguyen, Hang Dieu & Ngo, Mai Thanh & Nguyen, Hong Quang, 2021. "Examining ordering effects and strategic behaviour in a discrete choice experiment," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 394-413.
    18. Anastasio J. Villanueva & Klaus Glenk & Macario Rodríguez-Entrena, 2017. "Protest Responses and Willingness to Accept: Ecosystem Services Providers’ Preferences towards Incentive-Based Schemes," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(3), pages 801-821, September.
    19. Broberg, Thomas & Daniel, Aemiro Melkamu & Persson, Lars, 2021. "Household preferences for load restrictions: Is there an effect of pro-environmental framing?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    20. Baskaran, Ramesh & Cullen, Ross & Colombo, Sergio, 2010. "Testing different types of benefit transfer in valuation of ecosystem services: New Zealand winegrowing case studies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1010-1022, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:33:y:2024:i:5:p:929-951. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.